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24 years old. Apprenticeship fully served, and finally arrived in one of the two seats that you've been working towards sitting in for years; that of the quadruple reigning champions. And to start with, your home Grand Prix. All you need is for the car and engine combination to maintain its previous stratospheric standards...

At time of going to press, testing has shown little sign that Daniel Ricciardo's dream will be realised. Although, it has to be said, at time of going to press, testing has not been quite as indicative as it could have been. We don't know who is going to be fast and we won't know until the lights go out in Melbourne.

Ricciardo's team-mate, paradoxical pantomime villain and quadrakaiser Sebastian Vettel is going for his tenth race win in a row, although early suggestions are that his assault on double figures might not be as straightforward as some of the previous nine. At Jerez, getting to double figures in terms of laps was a struggle..

Winning the World Title is a great achievement. Defending is a lot more difficult. With the talk of the decline of Sebastian Vettel, it is an apt time to look at how the World Champions have fared the year after their title victory.

1951 - Guiseppe Farina
Farina was 1950 champion off the back of Juan Manuel Fangio's greater record of unreliability, which was not carried forward into 1951. Farina's only victory came as Fangio hit problems, finishing 4 laps down in 9th place. Alfa Romeo were challenged in 1951 by Ferrari too, with Ascari and Gonzalez eclipsing Farina's total to leave the Italian fourth in the final standings.

1952 - Juan Manuel Fangio
Although Fangio's chances in 1952 would have been minimal in anything but a Ferrari, as it was he was injured and competed in no Championship events.

1953 - Alberto Ascari
Victorious in all of his races in 1952, Ferrari's dominance of the F2 formula used for the World Championship was maintained. Ascari won the first three races with...

Given its the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend, we are all reminded of the brilliant final corner that was lost in 2007 when the ludicrous chicane was added to the track. Here are some other corners that have been lost - either through circuit revisions, or removal from the calendar.

Osterreichring - Bosch Kurve: The most challenging corner on one of racing's most beautiful circuits. This long right hander did not have any run off (until 1988, after F1 abandoned it) and was approached at 210 mph with the fastest cars in qualifying. I can't recall any major crashes here, however the sight of 1000 hp cars tacking this beast of a corner was something special. The corner currently lies under a pile of dirt, having been removed in the 1996 rebuild to now the Red Bull Ring.

Silverstone - Club Corner/Bridge Corner: The old Silverstone (pre 1991) was a series of fast kinks with little run off, but lots of satisfaction for the drivers. Club Corner was...

I have read a lot of comments on here and elsewhere about how the WDC is worthless this season due to the superiority of the Mercedes package.

However, it has more often than not been the case though that each season there is a dominant car, so one would have to question why that particular view is being touted only now.

In 2009 it was the Brawn, until the rest of the field caught up mid-season.
From 2011 to 2013 it was the Red Bull, in the hands of Vettel.

Granted, the Mercedes has been very dominant over the entire season, but that is due to the fact that the performance differential comes mainly from the engine, on which there is a development freeze.
No amount of aero tweaking is going to make up that sort of deficit, especially considering Mercedes are also free to tweak their aero as the season progresses.

It's not really that different to what we saw last season, with Vettel winning 13 races, including the last 9 in a row.
I don't recall reading comments from the same...

Monaco. The jewel in the crown. Where the crowd is closer and the colours are brighter. A truly unique track on the F1 calendar and everyone has massive love for it. Well actually they don’t. A lot of voices point out that there is hardly ever any overtaking, the races are dull and the track is just not suitable for modern F1. I, however, am not one of those because I absolutely love Monaco.

For me Monaco is one of the most exciting sporting events on the year. Some people have the cup final, I have Monaco and despite the cries of ‘dull races’ if you think back on It we always have drama at Monaco. Whether it be the three car train and the bumper cars behind of 2011, The team orders of 2007, Schumacher hitting Montoya in the tunnel in 04, Panis coming through the carnage in 96, Mansell all over the back of Senna in 92 or even the wet race no one wanted to win in 1982, there is always something to talk about at Monte Carlo.

So this Saturday sees the start of a brand new form of motorsport with the beginning of the Formula E Championship in Bejing. If you’re on European time you can tune in at 8am and enjoy it over your breakfast and if you’re across the pond you can stay up and have a late one. There has been a lot written about Formula E but its still not massively clear on what to expect from the new series. To prepare themselves for the championships the new teams decide to hold extensive test sessions at the Donnington Park race track and as its only up the road from me (and it was free to get in) I thought I’d go along and see what exactly to expect from Formula E. I took along my good friend Glenn who is a pretty good photographer so I thought I'd share some of the stuff he took. I took along my old Dad too who is the bloke next to me in the first pic.

The organisers from Formula E have continually been preaching the mantra that they...

When I started these retrospectives of F1 drivers I said I wouldn't cover any World Champion's, so now I'm going to break my own rules but, as you will see, Keke Rosberg won his title in the most bizarre year F1 ever suffered.

Most of you youngsters will know Keke as the father of Nico Rosberg and someone who used to drive an F1 car, back in the day. How best to describe Rosberg senior? Balls out probably just about sums it up. Whenever Keke got behind the wheel of an F1 car I don't think he knew how to give less than 100%.

His record in the lower formulas isn't exactly stellar. In four seasons of the European F2 Championship he won 3 races, one each in 1977, '78 and '79. But when you consider he was racing against the likes of Rene Arnoux, Bruno Giacomelli, Eddie Cheever and Brian Henton he didn't do too badly and, from what I can see, never completed a full season.

In 1978 he got his first drive in a formula one car with Theodore. His performances in the Championship...

This morning I got up at 6:30 to watch the Chinese Grand Prix and now regret this decision. You have commented recently that F1 is dying, I can't help but agree with your comments but the only people who can resolve the current nadir F1 finds itself in are the FIA and FOM.

One important point I should start with, the volume coming out of the exhaust pipe of an F1 car has no effect, either way, on my enjoyment of motor racing. The main problem, as I see it, is the prescriptive nature of the F1 engine requirements. Why do they have to have 6 cylinders and certain energy recovery systems? If an engine manufacturer believes they can compete with a 4 cylinder engine, a V3, an all electric system driven by a generator or a diesel engine why aren't these allowed?

DRS is a complete nonsense. Today a Honda powered car, reputedly with 150 less horse power than most other cars in the race, overtook a Force India using the engine widely acknowledge to be the most...

(As I’ve decided not to award half flagons, the drivers are also listed in my order of performance)

So, to get the post season debate going, I’d thought I’d give the drivers an overview based on nothing more than my subjective performance of them this year. Let the debate begin:

5 Flagons

Lewis Hamilton – The only real choice for the top award. While he may have been shaded by his team mate in qualification it made no difference on the Sunday. 11 wins in a season got the job done in style. Yes he had the car of the year but you’ve got to beat your team mate in the same car and you’ve got to avoid making mistakes over a race weekend. What made the real difference though was the noticeable change in attitude throughout the year. The Hamilton of old would visibly be emotional to the point of...

The Formula One season hosts its greatest irony every August; that its race in Belgium is famous and successful partly because it is built into the side of a hill. And while the supposed difficulty of naming 5 famous Belgians is a cliché, naming 5 famous corners at Spa is easy. Pouhon, Stavelot, Blanchimont, Bus Stop and La Source, for example. There's a lot of debate about that other corner's difficulty in 2014's F1 cars, but Eau Rouge is and always will be an inspiring sight.

The battle at the front is, as always likely to involve Mercedes cars. Lewis Hamilton has won the Belgian Grand Prix a number of times more than 0 and less than 3 in the past, but will surely hope to actually be in with a sniff of victory after Saturday's qualifying session. Rosberg's run of poles has been rather unchallenged more recently, but his last few opposed sessions have also resulted in starts from the front. He has an 11 point lead to defend, which makes this rather more fun than certain...